According to aides who were present when Trump discussed the issue, but who choose to remain anonymous for fear of retribution, Trump said he was sick of Vance and wanted to fire him. “I wanted him to be my attack dog,” said Trump, “but he appears foolish on television. He dropped the college football trophy. He met with Pope Francis and the next day the pope died. Vance is toxic, and I don’t want him to come near me. He just doesn’t look as good on television as I thought he would.”   read more

The abruptness of the decision caught even the highest ranking Saudi diplomats by surprise. Just hours before the reversal, Osama Nugali, spokesman for the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs, forwarded a message on his Twitter account celebrating the kingdom’s election to the Security Council seat it had “sought for more than two years with the help of a team of the best Saudi diplomats to represent the kingdom.”   read more

It has been revealed that some of the people targeted by the elections board were still eligible to vote. Further adding to the controversy is the fact that the board’s legal adviser is state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, the Republican candidate for governor who, according to recent polls, is trailing Democrat Terry McAuliffe.   read more

The Nuclear Regulator Commission (NRC) has been accused of inconsistent oversight of the nation’s nuclear power plants, most of which are operating beyond their originally intended lifespan. Those with the most high-level violations from 2000 to 2012 were Davis-Besse (14) in Oak Harbor, Ohio; Cooper (11); Kewaunee (9); Perry (8); Palisades (8) in Covert, Michigan; and Fort Calhoun (8) in Fort Calhoun, Nebraska.   read more

Nearly two-thirds of this money (about $230 million) essentially got flushed because no one could account for how it was spent. The office in question blew another $138 million on spare parts to cover shortages—without first determining whether the parts were really needed. The U.S. expected the Afghans to keep records of its inventory, but they did a shoddy job.   read more

Long characterized as merely a collector of intelligence to protect the United States, the National Security Agency (NSA) has played a key role in the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) drone program to assassinate overseas targets.   read more

Wesner has donated about $300,000 to Democratic candidates and organizations, including more than $148,000 to the Democratic National Committee. Not only did she donate $9,600 to Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns, Wesner also acted as a campaign bundler, raising more than $500,000 for each of Obama’s presidential runs. In early 2008 she founded a political action committee called Blue Texas that spent nearly $1 million on legislative races that year.   read more

At the Vicksburg Convalescent Center in Mississippi, employee Lee Ray Martin billed $101,000 in personal expenses to the trust accounts of 83 residents. She pleaded guilty in August to multiple counts of exploitation of vulnerable adults. Martin and others managed to go so far with their crimes because of lax oversight by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which regulates nearly all of the nation’s 16,000 nursing homes.   read more

Baghdad was labeled the epicenter of violent deaths during the war. Coalition forces were blamed for 35% of the killings, followed by militias at 32%. However coalition forces were responsible for most of the deaths of women. According to the report, “Gunshots were reported to cause 63% of violent deaths; car bombs, 12%; and other explosions, 9%.”   read more

The government relied upon national security claims to suppress evidence and convict Basaaly Moalin in February, along with three other Somali immigrants, of funneling $8,500 to al-Shabaab in 2007 and 2008. That evidence, it turned out, was obtained via the type of mass phone surveillance of U.S. citizens that former NSA contractor Eric Snowden made known after the trial, and which the government acknowledged in July.   read more

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sued the city on behalf of several plaintiffs, including Marlene Baldwin, a 77-year-old disabled Hopi woman who was arrested for panhandling. Baldwin was arrested in February and later released after begging for $1.25 for bus fare from an undercover police officer. Political support for the law has waned. In late September, the Flagstaff City Council voted unanimously to stop enforcing the statute, and agreed to settle the lawsuit.   read more

Mark B. Childress has served as an assistant to President Barack Obama and deputy chief of staff for planning at the White House since 2012. From 2011 to 2012, he served as senior counselor for Access to Justice at the Department of Justice, before moving on to his White House job. In that job, he received plaudits for guiding White House strategy on several politically difficult issues, including the exemption for some religious institutions from the ACA contraception mandate.   read more

Buried within the bill that restored funding to Washington and averted a default on the U.S. debt was $2.9 billion for the Olmsted Lock and Dam project, which would impact Illinois, Tennessee and Kentucky. McConnell had championed funding for the dam in his home state in previous years. The original allotment for the project—which is to be constructed on the Ohio River by URS Corporation—was $775 million.   read more

The nation’s second largest defense contractor has been caught four times in the last five years overcharging the government for military equipment or parts. In the latest discovery, Boeing wrongly charged the Department of Defense $16 million by billing for new helicopters parts, but only delivering used ones.   read more

“Much like a private homeowner is able to tell his guests whether they can bring a gun into his yard, FedEx should have the right to decide what it will and will not allow on its private property,” Mark Hogan, vice president of U.S. security for FedEx Express told Tennessee lawmakers last year, according to The Wall Street Journal. Gun-rights advocates claim the laws increase worker safety, and say that workers have a right to protect themselves during their commutes.   read more

An egregious example involved Stephen Hadley, who was often identified during his television appearances as George W. Bush’s national security advisor while calling for the Obama administration to hit Syria. What wasn’t mentioned was Hadley’s place on the board of directors of Raytheon Company, or that he owns stock in the firm. Why is this important? Raytheon manufactures the Tomahawk cruise missile, which likely would have been the weapon used to conduct strikes on Syria.   read more

In Into the Fire: A Firsthand Account of the Most Extraordinary Battle in the Afghan War, his memoir of the 2009 battle that made him famous, Meyer claimed insurgents swarmed his vehicle, leading to his fighting off the attackers with both a rifle and a machine gun. But a McClatchy investigation has uncovered videos from an Army medevac helicopter that showed no Taliban in the area where Meyer was at the time of the attack.   read more